A Mule In Brighton
'The first Sunday in November is Old Crocks Race. The open-topped cars roll into town, brass lamps gleaming, horns honking, bumper whicker hampers lashed to the back. The riders, battened down in outlandish mufflers and Biggles hats, proceed along the Old Steine like a Pathé newsreel of the upper classes. Stiff, cold and clinically mad. They trundle past the Old Steine Buildings which once housed civic weddings on the ground floor, and the Clapp Clinic above. One hazy memory of emerging from an appointment through a shower of confetti.
'Outside, the slanting winter sun settles on the waves in a soft, luminous shimmer, silhouetting the fairground rides at the end of the Palace Pier. The clockwork climb up the Big Dipper stalls briefly in a bubble of time, before crashing into oblivion. Underneath the Arches, I catch sight of Fishwife Carol climbing into her freezer. Woman of strange habits. Sid, cross-legged looking out to sea, beak moving this way and that like a contemplative seagull. And Alan, standing sentry by the shellfish barrow, custodian of Brightons' fishing past. The air wilts around a cauldron of steaming whelks, an aroma like no other. Bottled and stored it would guarantee an end to wars of attrition. Brave captains who had survived boiling oil and mustard gas, would desert in droves when exposed to essence of cooked whelk. Bedraggled ranks of shell shocked troops seeking refuge inside a freezer.
'The tourists gone, Brightonians reclaim their link with the sea, ambling along the lower promenade and gamboling on the beach. The heady summer cocktail of sun, booze and naked flesh, fades to a softer appreciation of the primal forces at work. A serene expanse of blue grey, tilting gently towards the horizon, calms the space inside your head. And a wild sea, sucking and seething at the raging shingle, draws the pain from a love-torn heart.
'We refuse to give up on the West Pier, nurturing the hope of something fantastic emerging from the past. Now battered and burnt into submission, the remnant closest to the shore hangs above the waves like a crushed wood lice. With each new assault from the sea, crowds gather in silent witness to the penultimate episode of a class act. The rusting ironwork of the old Ballroom is all that is left standing, defiantly presenting its' profile to the setting sun. Darkness brings the seafront nightclubs to life, black-clad bouncers flexing their necks and policing the ritual queue for the door. Sound systems strike up, and soon the entire stretch of ancient arches are pulsating along the beach, drawing willowy hoods and baggy trousers, tight tight tops and stiletto feet, into the warm, charged, dark, caverns: the subterranean Brighton beat.'